Campaign Against Torture
PHR Executive Director Leonard Rubenstein Debates US Army Surgeon General Kevin Kiley on Physician Participation in Interrogations
Listen to the debate
"The integral role of BSCTs [Behavioral Science Consultation Teams] in interrogation is to help interrogators determine when to push harder for intelligence, making them effectively, calibrators of distress and pain," said Physicians for Human Rights Executive Director Leonard Rubenstein to Army Surgeon General Kevin C. Kiley, before an audience of more than 200 people in Chicago. On the evening of March 13, Mr. Rubenstein and General Kiley engaged in an extraordinary debate regarding the role of military doctors in interrogations at US detention facilities, including Guantánamo Bay. The debate, moderated by Chicago Public Radio host Jerome McDonnell, was organized by students at Loyola University's Stritch School of Medicine, in Chicago, and sponsored in part by the school's PHR student chapter.
General Kiley pointed out that the BSCTs don't report to the medical chain of command but rather to the intelligence command because they don't provide patient care. This distinction between clinicians providing patient care and those who do not is a hallmark of the guidelines passed by the Department of Defense last summer (see Winkenwerder link, below). These guidelines exclude doctors and other health personnel who play a "consulting" role to interrogators from the prohibition against doing harm. Kiley stated that the psychiatrists and psychologists participating on the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams "keep interrogations safe, legal, ethical and effective." Rubenstein retorted that determining safety and effectiveness is appropriate for the Federal Drug Administration when it studies drugs, but it is not an appropriate requirement for doctors to determine whether interrogations are safe and effective.
In nearly two hours of provocative dialogue, Rubenstein and General Kiley discussed the participation of medical personnel in the interrogation of detainees, the role of army psychiatrists in the development and monitoring of interrogation techniques, and recent controversial changes in the military's code of medical ethics. Both speakers acknowledged that the US Army is an "army of values" and that the vast majority of soldiers and medics understand those values. But Rubenstein emphasized the prolonged abuse of Guantánamo detainees while under the care of military physicians. He cited in particular an intensive and protracted abusive interrogation of an alleged 11th hijacker that resulted in abuse, a health emergency, and sleep deprivation while the detainee was under the care of doctors: "If this doesn't show how doctors were involved in the machinery of torture," Rubenstein said, "then nothing does."
General Kiley conceded that there has been "tremendous disagreement" among military personnel regarding interrogation techniques that the UN Commission on Human Rights, in a February 2006 report, has described as cruel, inhuman, and degrading. "I'm told that most interrogators saw quickly that these techniques were not effective," Kiley said. The General also stated that military personnel, including doctors, "are governed by the laws of war" – an endorsement of the Geneva Conventions that directly contradicts the Bush Administration's current policies related to detainees held at Guantánamo Bay. Because the doctor's obligation is to "do no harm" and to promote physical and mental health, and because interrogation is inherently coercive and stress-inducing, Rubenstein argued that there is no ethical role for doctors in interrogations.
Both General Kiley and Rubenstein emphasized the value and importance of dialogue about medical ethics and interrogation and of using this event to engage in open discussion.
Related Reading:
- General Kiley's assessment of physician participation in abuses
- Coercive US Interrogation Policies: A Challenge to Medical Ethics (article in JAMA co-authored by PHR -- registration required)
- PHR's Letter to William Winkenwerder, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs regarding Pentagon guidelines on physician role in interrogations
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